Hazel Tells LaVerne

I liked this poem because of its structure.  Although the poem used no punctuation, I felt like it was easy to read because the way it was set up.  It is separated into clauses and clearly shows the emphasis on certain phrases by breaking it up this way.  Throughout the poem, slang was also used as phrases like "tryin ta," "talkin bout," and "ya" all appear.  Also, the idea is introduced that if a princess kisses a frog, it will turn into a prince.  I feel like this is used in many storylines that involves princesses.  One example off the top of my head is in Shrek as Fiona's father turns into a frog because the spell was reversed or something.  An odd thing about this poem is that the princess actually does not allow the spell to come true.  She does not kiss the frog and just flushes down the frog without questions.

Getting Out

I liked this poem because I could understand the meaning, or so I think.  Two people were married, but now they are divorced.  They had "matching eyes and hair" which I think is a common stereotype that some couples have.  They have "kept to separate sides of the map" which I interpreted to mean that they were on opposite sides of a country.  The couple writes yearly letters to each other which tell the other how "happy" they are.  I think they would rather be with each other, but they cannot because they disagree too much.  Even on the day of their divorce, they amazed the lawyer by crying because they really did not want to go through with it.  This couple both contributed to the pain that ended their marriage, but neither of them truly wanted it to end.

Dover Beach

The setting of "Dover Beach" plays an important role in the context of the poem.  It is placed outdoors on a beach near France and England.  There is a "calm sea," and "the tide is full" which must mean it is night.  A "night-wind" is blowing causing me to believe that this setting will not stay for long.  I think a storm is about to occur and shift the scenery from being peaceful to chaotic.  The poem ends mentioning that "ignorant armies clash by night."  "Armies" signify the waves as they clash against each other like they do in a storm.  The person whom is he addressing is his lover because he says "Ah, love, let us be true" in line 29.

Crossing the Bar

Crossing the Bar talks about an aspect of death, and the way he might want to die.  Question 4 asks what "that which drew from out the boundless deep" refers to.  I think it refers to the tide that goes out onto the beach only to go right back into the ocean.  The "boundless deep" must then signify the ocean as the ocean is one thing of which the tide comes back.  Towards the end of the poem, "Pilot" is capitalized because it refers to God, the pilot of all events and creator of the world.  The setting must be at night because there is high tide and the sunset and evening star.  "Crossing the bar" must mean passing from life onto death as the poem states that the speaker wants to see God once he has "crossed the bar."  The one thing I don't understand is how the speaker wants to die.  Does he want to float away in the ocean, or does he just want a peaceful death?

My mistress' eyes

The several tones of this poem are very interesting.  It starts out with having a tone of disappointment with his mistress.  He compares how his girl's eyes are "nothing like the sun."  "Coral is far more red than her lips' red."  "In some perfumes is there more delight then in the breath that from my mistress reeks."  "Music hath a far more pleasing sound" than his lover's voice.  These are all examples of how he is basically pointing out all of her flaws.  Then, he shifts the tone in the last two lines to how glorious and rare she is.  The poem ends with "I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare."  I think it is ironic that he does this as he kind of contradicts himself in the same poem.  By doing this, Shakespeare has a great deal of effect on the poem and its meaning.  He wanted to show how the flaws of his "mistress" do not even compare to the rarity that she possesses.

next to of course god america i

Ask (or suggest) and you shall receive...

Well, I do not really know what to say about this poem.  The form and pattern of the poem was basically a whole bunch of words smashed into different lines.  The majority of the poem was in quotation marks, but the last two sentences were not in quotations.  I'm guessing that someone was giving a speech or something, and that's why there are quotation marks?  This poem also reminded me of the song "My Country Tis of Thee."  They have many common words, and I found myself stop reading in the middle of it and humming the tune.  As for analysis, I understood that the "heroic happy dead" did not stop to think about what they did, but I do not know what that means.  I really could not follow this poem because I felt that too many words were crammed together without punctuation.

APO 96225

This was definitely my favorite poem of the unit because it was told like a story.  Irony is a big part of the poem as dramatic irony takes place when we know what went on in the Vietnam War, but the people in the U.S. really had no idea.  A mother begs her son to tell them what is going on, but the son is trying to block his parents from the depressing side of the war.  The mother continues to beg, and the son tells her that he killed a man and dropped napalm on women and children.  She was horrified, and the father told the son to not write depressing letters.  I find this quite hysterical because the parents were asking for the truth.  When they finally received the truth, it was horrible, and they did not want to know anymore.  The poem really shows how clueless the people in the U.S. were about the war in Vietnam, and all they really wanted was answers.  In reality, the people just wanted to hear positive things happening in Vietnam instead of negative.

Sorting Laundry

"Folding clothes, I think of folding you into my life."

This is a metaphor representing how when the speaker folds clothes, the different clothes remind her of the person she is talking to in different ways.  For example, the patterned towels reminded her of them buying the towels on sale and saving them for the beach.  Another example is the bed sheets and pillowcases holding all of their dreams.  I think that while the poem is taking place, the girl is folding laundry and her husband is at work.  In line 43, the poem brings up the idea of someone leaving her when it says "if you were to leave me."  It also continues by saying "a mountain of unsorted wash could not fill the empty side of the bed."  She expresses how important he is in her life, and how she does not know what she would do if she lost him.  Overall, I liked this poem because I could follow most of it.

Batter my heart, three-personed God

This poem was very religious, I thought, as it talked about the Trinity.  In the poem, the author used different words as metaphors to stand for each part of the Trinity.  "Knock" and "break" refer to the Son, or Jesus, because those are two physical actions that humans do and Jesus was human.  "Breathe" and "blow" refer to God the Father because he breathed life into each human and makes the wind blow.  "Shine" and "burn" definitely refer to the Holy Spirit because it burns in our hearts and shines through us to other people.  I also thought that the speaker was asking God to guide him or her through life.  In the second quatrain, the speaker compares himself or herself to a soldier as he or she talks about defending and someone being captivated.  I thought the use of first person in this poem was interesting too because the reader can relate to the speaker.

Barbie Doll

"Her good nature wore out like a fan belt."

This quote is an example of a simile.  I had to look up what a fan belt was, and the dictionary defined it as a part of the engine that turns the fan for drawing cool air through the radiator.   I'm guessing the author used this comparison to show that her good nature wore out quickly, and it was done for good.  The rest of the poem describes a barbie doll at some points and an actual human at others.  The author used the phrases "healthy, tested intelligent" and "abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity" to represent the human-like characteristics.  The poem also demonstrates a person going through puberty as her classmates made fun of her for her fat nose and thick legs.  She was told by others just to ignore the bullying, but she could not take it anymore.  "Her good nature" and going along with everything was done because she was tired of being bullied.  "Barbie Doll" ends with an example of irony because everyone says she looks pretty in the casket when she was made fun of in her life for not being pretty.

Toads

"I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both."

This poem is broken up into quatrains.  If I'm being completely honest, I would have to say that I really did not get this poem at all.  The above excerpt went too deep for me, and I did not follow it.  I think it's pretty important though because the poem ends with this quote.  I thought that the speaker was poor and trying to explain that it is O.K.  The bills are being paid, and a fire is in a bucket like the homeless may do.  The children have no shoes, and everyone is skinny but not starving.  He will never be able to get the fame, girl, and the money, and he has accepted that.

February

"February" is an interesting poem to say the least.  It talks about the month February, where watching hockey and trying to stay warm by the fire are the main things to do.  Then, the poem switches over to describe a cat's instinct to jump on their owner's face and check if they are alive.  I did not know cats did this, and if I was a cat owner, I would be freaked out if it randomly jumped on my head.  Next, it explains how we should eat our young like sharks do.  That is disgusting, and I will never do that, just throwing that out there.  The speaker communicates that February is a month of despair, but I do not see February that way at all.  When I think about the month, I think of Valentine's Day and one of the last chances to get a two-hour delay.  It does not snow as often in March as it does in February so one has to make the most of it in February.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

The pattern of this poem really stuck out to me when I was reading it.  In every other stanza, the last words of the first and third line rhymed and the second and fourth lines rhymed a different way.  I liked how this poem was set up because I think the poem flows better when it rhymes.  This poem was also split up into quatrains as each quatrain was a stanza.  I think the poem is talking about a person dying because of the following lines:
"And whisper to their souls to go,
While some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no."
I think this definitely points out that the soul wants to leave the body, people did not want the person to die, and the person is breathing their last.  The rest of the poem does not discuss the fact of death though.  It might be discussing the life that the person had.  Then, the poem ends with someone traveling in a circle.  This could mean that their soul started with God, and it came back up to God in heaven.

The Joy of Cooking

I think the central theme of this poem is that everyone has characteristics that make them different.  The author picked the sister's tongue to represent that she talked too much because that's the part of her body that moves the most.  Her tongue is "best with horseradish" which I interpreted it to mean that she cusses often.  The speaker's brother is represented by a heart.  This is not any old heart though; it's small, firm, dry, and muscular. I interpreted these as the brother is malign, ungenerous, and selfish.  Normally people say that others have hard hearts meaning that they are cruel and mean.  The brother's heart "barely feeds two" which means the heart is not as big as other people's hearts who "serve six."  I think the speaker is trying to tell the reader that these two aspects of his siblings annoy the speaker the most.

Dream Deferred

This poem was my favorite of this unit because it was short, simple, and to the point.  Hughes demonstrates the use of five similes and one metaphor in "Dream Deferred."  The first simile is "dry up like a raisin in the sun."  I personally liked this image because I know what a raisin looks like and can imagine it being dried up.  The poem also mentions that the dream could "fester like a sore," "stink like rotten meat," be like a "syrupy sweet," or "sag like a heavy load."  These images are all easy to comprehend, and he uses examples that almost everyone could relate to.  The diction exerted also makes the images more realistic.  Fester and sag are two words that stuck out in my mind when I read the poem.  I believe the main purpose of the poem was to make the reader think about what really happens to those dreams that are not achieved and tell the reader some possibilities.

The Panther

This was another one of the poems that I enjoyed from this section because I could understand almost all of it.  The poem is literally explaining a "panther" that is held as a prisoner behind bars, like at a zoo.  It "paces in cramped circles, over and over" because there is nothing else to do.  I think that the image of the panther was used instead of a lion because a panther is warlike and a lion is too powerful for this imagery.  The "powerful soft strides" hint that the animal cannot be too powerful, but it must be seen as strong in some way.

I really think that this poem has nothing to do with a panther but with a prisoner on death row.  The person is held behind bars and then put into shackles.  The prisoner appears calm and strong during all of this, but inside he or she is weak.  At the end, the prisoner gets the injection, and it rushes through the person's body.  It stops his or her heart, and the prisoner dies.

Convergence of the Twain

Originally, I read did not read the subtitle, but I still thought that it referenced the Titanic.  I really liked this poem because I could relate it to something that I've heard of before.  The boat was solitary in the sea with constant waves, and a sea-worm was crawling up the boat.  The "sea-worm" symbolizes the water going higher and higher as the boat is sinking.  This poem also points out that the ship was popular in the areas of "stature, grace, and hue."  This means that the ship was seen as a treasure until it sank and now has no value at the bottom of the ocean.

"Alien they seemed to be:
No Mortal Eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history"

I think this part of poem describes how no one could have seen it coming and that it was so unpredictable.  The boat was growing ever so popular until the time grew closer and closer to when it would end.  The tragic end "jars two hemispheres" and changed the world so every boat after would not have the same culmination.

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

"And then a Plank of Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And finished knowing - then -"

First of all, the poem is broken up into quatrains.  I believe the author did this because it makes the poem flow better.  She also rhymed every other line of the quatrain which also contributes to the purpose the author chose to write like this.  This poem is funeral-like in the beginning with "mourners to and fro," "all were seated," and a Service "beating" like a drum.  Then, it goes into discussing the afterlife.  The person hears Heaven bells, but then it's silent and solitary.  Next, I believe it discusses either going to Hell or there being no afterlife after all.  It describes that "a Plank of Reason broke," someone is "dropped down," and hitting a "World at every plunge."  The poem ends by saying that the person "finished knowing."  I think that means that the person is completely done living whether that be in Hell or just gone forever.

The Widow's Lament in Springtime

"...with the cold fire that closes round me this year."

The above quote is an example of an oxymoron because cold and fire do not go together as fire is a source of heat.  The poet combined these words to make this phrase have a negative or depressing connotation.  In the poem, the widow is walking around her yard, being constantly reminded of her dead husband with the yellow and red flowers on the branches of the trees.  I think that there is also some symbolism for the type of settings described.  The yard represents her entire life.  The meadows symbolize the joys of her life. The heavy woods demonstrate her times of trouble, and the marsh might represent death.  The white flowered trees off in the distance represent heaven or her eternal joy when she can finally see her husband again.  Overall, I liked this poem because I could understand it a little better than the last one.

Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Although the meaning of this poem is not clear to me, I did manage to find a couple literary techniques being used.

"Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing."

The first technique I saw was the example of the anthropomorphism.  Something (I don't know what) is rinsing and wringing another object.  Then, the next line has an example of a simile.  An ear is "strik[ing] like lightning" just to hear someone sing.  I believe this could possibly be referring to someone waiting, wanting, and listening for a bird to sing since it is Spring.  When I think of Spring, I often think of wildlife like trees and animals coming back to life and making everything pleasant again.  Birds chirping, trees glowing a shade of green, flowers blooming, and wildlife scurrying are some things that come to my mind about Spring.  Towards the end of the poem, Hopkins references Christ, Lord, and the Garden of Eden.  It makes me think that the poetic might be religious and trying to add some aspect of it into his poetry.

Perrine Poetry

While Perrine brings up some good points in his article, I don't agree with everything that he says.  When he initially stated that there were correct and incorrect ways to interpret poetry, I completely disagreed because I believe that everyone has their own opinion about how the poetry could be interpreted.  Then, he gave the example of the thief, and it made me kind of want to agree with him.  I guess some interpretations could be more valid than others, but I think that no one's interpretation is definitely wrong.  Later in the article, Perrine uses the example of the poem by Emily Dickinson to further his point.  I, like others he mentioned in his article, thought that it represented a field of flowers.  Perrine said it represented a sunset and that he was right because his theory satisfied more of the details.  I don't agree with him because I feel that the field of flowers describes the poem just as well as a sunset.

I was also really interested when Perrine discussed the poems by Whitman and Melville.  I thought both of them were talking about an army, but apparently I was wrong.  Perrine stated that Melville's poem was about the stars, and now that he said that, I can really see where he's coming from.  Words like beaming, bright, stream, gleam, twinkling, and shining can all refer to stars and help him justify his interpretation.  Towards the end of the article, Perrine suggests the concepts of symbols.  Once again, he stressed that not all interpretations can be valid but possibly more than one could be.  He also states that symbols can help us figure out what some poetry means as poets often use symbols in their poems to stand for something bigger than the one word they wrote down.  Finally, we must make the best interpretation that we can make that satisfies all of the details and doesn't make too many assumptions.